Material: Stone / unspecified

This inscription is one of several incised on the steps leading to a ruined shrine near the reconstructed porch known as ‘the Stone Canopy’ or ‘Burrows’ Pavilion’ in the area of the Abhayagiri vihara at Anurādhapura. Eight of these inscriptions remain legible. On the basis of palaeographic evidence, they can be dated to the second half of the sixth century or the first half of the seventh century. They register grants of money by various individuals to the Abhayagiri-vihāra for the maintenance of slaves.

This inscription is one of several incised on the steps leading to a ruined shrine near the reconstructed porch known as ‘the Stone Canopy’ or ‘Burrows’ Pavilion’ in the area of the Abhayagiri vihara at Anurādhapura. Eight of these inscriptions remain legible. On the basis of palaeographic evidence, they can be dated to the second half of the sixth century or the first half of the seventh century. They register grants of money by various individuals to the Abhayagiri-vihāra for the maintenance of slaves.

This inscription is one of several incised on the steps leading to a ruined shrine near the reconstructed porch known as ‘the Stone Canopy’ or ‘Burrows’ Pavilion’ in the area of the Abhayagiri vihara at Anurādhapura. Eight of these inscriptions remain legible. On the basis of palaeographic evidence, they can be dated to the second half of the sixth century or the first half of the seventh century. They register grants of money by various individuals to the Abhayagiri-vihāra for the maintenance of slaves.

This inscription is one of several incised on the steps leading to a ruined shrine near the reconstructed porch known as ‘the Stone Canopy’ or ‘Burrows’ Pavilion’ in the area of the Abhayagiri vihara at Anurādhapura. Eight of these inscriptions remain legible. On the basis of palaeographic evidence, they can be dated to the second half of the sixth century or the first half of the seventh century. They register grants of money by various individuals to the Abhayagiri-vihāra for the maintenance of slaves.

This inscription is engraved across the front, one side and the back of a stone slab now preserved in the Archaeological Museum at Anurādhapura. Senarath Paranavitana recorded that the slab was said to have been discovered in the area of the Abhayagiri Vihāra in Anurādhapura. He also noted that it had been included in the list of lithic inscriptions from Nuvara-kalāviya exhibited at Anurādhapura in the Archaeological Survey of Ceylon Annual Report for 1911–12 (p. 73, no. 16). He was unable to find any other references to the slab giving further details about its provenance.  The inscription registers some donations made to a Buddhist monastery by the queen of a king called Badadasa Ḷa-Parideva. Neither the name of the monastery nor that of the queen is preserved. However, it seems that the final part of the monastery’s name may have been la, suggesting that it was not the Abhayagiri Vihara, in which case we may perhaps assume that the slab was originally situated elsewhere and brought to this vihara at a later date, possibly for some architectural purpose. As for the king’s name, Paranavitana argues that Parideva may be taken as a clerical error for or variant of Paridadeva – a combination of the personal name Pārinda and the suffix deva, which could be applied to the appellation of any royal personage. According to the chronicle, Pārinda was one of the six Tamil rulers who occupied the throne of Anurādhapura in the fifth century A.D., prior to the accession of Dhātusena. Since Ḷa in Sinhalese means ‘tender’ or ‘young’, Ḷa-Pari(da)deva can be understood as ‘Pārindadeva the Younger’, which equates to Khudda Pārinda (the lesser Pārinda), the name given in the chronicle to king Pārinda’s younger brother and successor. Hence Paranavitana attributes this inscription to Khudda Pārinda, the Tamil king who reigned from 437 to 452 (or from 498 to 513, according to Wickremasinghe’s chronology).

The inscription is engraved on a flat rock in the village of Koṭṭangē in the Mādurē Kōraḷē of the Vǟuḍavili Hatpattu in the Kuruṇǟgala District. When Senarath Paranavitana visited the site in 1931, the rock lay just within the boundaries of a coconut plantation called the Ōgoḍapola Estate in the Delviṭa Group. It was at that time completely buried under about two feet of earth, soil having washed down the hillside and covered the rock. However, a local villager who had seen the rock some years previously alerted Paranavitana to its existence. Paranavitana was then able to remove the earth and reveal the inscription, which he copied for the Archaeological Department. The existence of an inscription at this place had previously been mentioned in the Return of the Architectural and Archaeological and other Antiquities existing in Ceylon, which was published by the Ceylon Government in 1890, but it is not clear whether the inscription in question was the present record or IN03164, which is engraved on another rock in the same vicinity.

No date is given in the inscription. It opens with a Sanskrit verse, a significant portion of which is no longer legible. The rest of the inscription is written in Sinhalese and records that a mahāthera of the Vilgammuḷa fraternity, whose name is obliterated, granted to the saṅgha the pamuṇu village of Kaḷama and some other lands belonging to him. This mahāthera is said to have been the grandson of a personage who belonged to the Lämäni family but, unfortunately, the name of the latter is not preserved. We may presume that the mahāthera was a grandson of Loke Arakmenā, to whom the village was originally granted by Lokeśvara, as recorded in the other inscription at this site (IN03164). This supposition gains further strength from the fact that, as shown by the title ‘Arakmenā’, general Loke belonged to the Lämäni stock; his connection with the Vilgammuḷa fraternity is also shown by the stipulation in the first inscription that any disputes concerning the lands in question were to be settled by a mahāthera of that religious institution.

The inscription is incised in two panels either side of a natural crevice on the top of a boulder in an area of land known as Puvak-aram̆ba or Koṭṭangē-aram̆ba in the village of Koṭṭangē in the Mādurē Kōraḷē of the Vǟuḍavili Hatpattu in the Kuruṇǟgala District. It was first copied for scholarship by the Archaeological Department in 1931. The existence of an inscription at this place had previously been mentioned in the Return of the Architectural and Archaeological and other Antiquities existing in Ceylon, which was published by the Ceylon Government in 1890, but it is not clear whether the inscription in question was the present record or IN03165, which is engraved on another rock in the same vicinity.

The present inscription registers the grant of a village named Kaḷama to the general Loke Arakmenā, by the king Lokeśvara-bāhu Cakravartti, in recognition of the former’s services in defeating the Coḷas. The name Lokeśvara-bāhu in this record obviously stands for Lokis-sara or Lokeśvara of the chronicles. Two rulers of this name are mentioned in the historical writings of Sri Lanka, both of whom occupied the throne for short periods in troubled times. On palaeographic grounds, Senarath Paranavitana assigned this record to the second of these kings, who reigned for seven months at Poḷonnaruva in 1210 and was preceded and succeeded on the throne by queen Līlāvatī. The encounter, referred to in this record, between the Coḷas and the Sinhalese – presumably on Sri Lankan soil – is not mentioned in the chronicles.